


Fall

by Mur



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Post - Dark Signer arc, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-01-27 17:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mur/pseuds/Mur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It felt like everyone wanted the power of the signers, but all he wanted was emptiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fall

Yusei wondered if he was slipping.

Hadn't he died once? 

He wasn't sure if he could remember anymore. He walled himself up in the garage, as much as he could, but it was always crowded there. His friends would come to see him, talk, and leave. He had never talked much to begin with, but their voices were dulling now, and he could barely hear them. They would speak, but all he could hear was slow, droned-out hums rather than words. He couldn't fully focus on their faces, either. In fact, he couldn't focus on anything. He tried to focus on his work, immersing himself in it, trying to bring back his sense of reality, but nothing worked. 

He wandered through his days and the corners of his mind in a strange haze, unable to ground himself. He couldn't stop thinking about that duel with Kiryu. Kiryu had become a dark signer because of _him_. It had all been a misunderstanding, but he blamed himself regardless. Maybe there was something else he could have done; something he could have said to save him earlier, to be sure that Kiryu never felt betrayed, but protected by his comrades. That was what they had tried to do all along. They had left him to save him, but it had done nothing. What if he _had_  gone in his stead? What if he hadstopped him? What if he had thrown the duel, and let Kiryu live? 

His mind was endlessly generating what-ifs and if-thens, hoping that if things had gone differently, that Kiryu could be here with him.  
That was the thing about Yusei. He always blamed himself in these situations. Not because he felt genuinely guilty, but he felt that someone needed to be responsible for tragic events that happened. When there was no one, people just became mad at the world, and had nowhere to actually direct their blame. 

If he took responsibility, he could draw that towards him. He could be responsible, he could be the one to handle the weight of everything that happened to everyone. If he held up satellite by himself, everyone else could be free. 

It felt like everyone wanted the power of the signers, but all he wanted was emptiness. 

He started riding alone at night. He'd never go anywhere in particular. Around satellite, across the city, even onto the mainland. He'd stop on a clifftop overlooking the city, and stare out at it. In the city proper, the skyscrapers cut jagged outlines into the sky, their lights piercing into the night. The lights washed out into the horizon, but just a glance away was Satellite, dim, with only the occasional orange glow of a light in a window here or there. It wasn't illuminated as some chrome temple to a materialistic god, but it was sad in its own way. It scraped across the otherwise tranquil landscape, trash piled high on the outskirts, with tiny outcroppings of buildings and life jutting into it. Wasn't this his world? Wasn't this everything he needed to protect? He had everything he wanted right here! Then why was it that he felt so lost? So empty?  
He knew something was missing. He had convinced himself that he didn't know what, but it was more the fact that he didn't know how to admit it to himself. 

_Kiryu, and nothingness._

But a city was full of everything. People and cars, noise and buildings. In Satellite the trash was piled so high, he couldn't even breathe anymore. It crowded him in. What had once been the place where he thrived, was quickly becoming his prison. He just wanted to escape it, escape everything. He couldn't even escape himself. Not only that, but it was foolish to want Kiryu.

Kiryu was dead. Gone. Even after everything, he had failed. 

Standing on the clifftop, he could feel the wind blowing his hair, pressing his bangs against his face haphazardly. He could hear the waves crashing far below him, lapping against the side of the cliff; eventually they'd erode it away into nothing. Yusei wished that the water would erode him away as well. He wished the wind would stop, that he would cease to exist. He just wanted to disappear. 

Dying wouldn't be enough for him. 

He heard a dry chuckle escape his throat. His voice sounded so far away, and so painfully sad. But as he thought about it, he wasn't really sad at all. He wasn't really anything. The realization that he still existed wrapped around his heart like a cold, stony hand--forcing it to continue beating, to keep breathing, and there was no end to it. He couldn't stand here forever. If he did, he'd eventually tire out and collapse, someone would find him, and take him home, and he'd continue to lay in bed _existing,_  despising his own reality. 

He briefly wondered how far he would have to fall to die. He imagined it wouldn't hurt much. Pain was just a symptom of being alive. Pain meant you were real. And if there was something after death, he would be disappointed. He didn't want to be reincarnated. He didn't want to feel anymore, or anything ever again. Maybe if it all ended, sweet darkness would wrap his mind and his heart in its warm embrace and take him away, dissolving him within the black void. 

He reached for it, eyes wide, but seeing nothing at all.

He didn't even feel his feet leave the ground, pushing away from the edge and into nothingness. 


	2. Chapter 2

For a time, there was nothing.

Darkness had taken him, and if he had been able to think, he would have welcomed it.

There was darkness, and then.

Then there was pain. 

It flared up from his right arm, and seared throughout his entire body.

No, he was dead, wasn't he? Or where was he?

The pain flared up again, and he cried out into the nothingness. All at once he began to feel again, he was cold, wet, and in pain. _Excruciating_  pain. He opened his mouth to scream, or felt as though he had opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. In his mind, he was screaming. Screaming in pain; screaming into the nothingness.

Why? Why was he spared? Why wasn't he gone? He wanted to end, just as Kiryu had! 

**I will not let you die, my child**.  


The voice was nowhere, and everywhere, inside his mind and throughout his being. His arm throbbed and he curled around it, begging the pain to stop. _Please, make it stop, make it end! I want to end!_  He thought. He bit down on his lip to stop himself from screaming further, but it just caused more _pain_. The voice answered him, as if it could hear his thoughts.

**So you intend to throw your life away?**

_Are you mocking me?_

**No. I am simply your protector, and losing you will be losing a part of me. If you desire, I can leave you, but I cannot promise that you will find what you seek.**

For the first time in what felt like ages, Yusei hesitated. This voice must be the Crimson Dragon. The dragon didn't want him to die. Well, of course. It was trying to protect itself, but it also had some strange disjointed affection for him that he never could quite rationalize.   
He had died before; he remembered it like it was some sort of faraway dream, but he still could recall it. His father was there. He had been the one to send him back. Yusei had accepted death, but his father had assured him it was not his time. He had been right. But when /was/ his time? Why couldn't this be his time? Why did he still exist? 

The entity speaking to him wasn't his father, but another spirit that had manifested somewhere, either in reality or in the recesses of his mind; he couldn't be certain which. He let his eyes slide open, but he saw nothing. It was dark, and the ground below him was hard, smooth, but not like tile or anything he really knew how to identify. His entire body screamed in pain as he began to haul himself upright, into a sitting position, and even more reluctantly, to his feet. 

_If you leave me, will I die?_

**Why do you ask, my child? Do you truly desire death?**

He couldn't tell where it was coming from. It was nowhere, and everywhere, all at once. His head throbbed, and he briefly wondered why his body was trying _so damn hard_  to keep him alive. It was annoying. It was hard. If his body just gave up, it would stop hurting. Wasn't that easy enough?

Was dying going to lead to nothingness? Was there any other way to reach it? Why was dying so hard, anyway?

Why couldn't death just come to him? Maybe death didn't make housecalls. Ugh. 

_It's none of your concern._

**It is, when one of my children is suffering. I am not speaking out of self-preservation, if that is your implication**.

He wasn't going to let him go. 

Yusei raised a foot, daring to take a step forward, feeling the way with his foot. He couldn't see anything, but somehow he didn't feel as though there was anything to see. Didn't think he had been blinded, either. If he looked down, he could see his hands and feet before him as clear as if he was standing in the sunlight. No, this wasn't a place he knew of; this wasn't a place anywhere on earth. 

_I know you need me. You need us_.

**I do, but I can go to others. There are always others. The five of you are truly people of legend, of a power all your own. I was simply drawn to it. You carried my spirit.**

_I didn't choose you. You chose me._

He stepped forward again, slowly putting one foot in front of the other, dragging himself forward. 

**To the contrary, you and Jack called out to me.**

That's right. The duel. So much of his life had been about living. About clashing with others, sometimes just because he could, because he wanted to, for the thrill, for the fun of it, but at the same time, he had always dueled because he had to. He had to fight for others, he had to fight to protect them. They were important to him. They were the reason he lived, the reason he thrived. He existed for others, not for himself. He hadn't been selfish, like he was being now. The dragon had heeded that. It had come to him because he needed it, and it needed him. 

He wasn't like that, anymore.

Losing Kiryu a second time had broken him.

It was a moment of weakness that had changed him. 

He shouldn't have let him go again, but he couldn't stop it. He couldn't stop anything. As a signer he felt even more powerless than he felt as a person. His heart ached with longing. Having such a desire for death was selfish. Killing himself was selfish. Wanting Kiryu, even when he was unattainable, unreachable, was selfish and downright foolish. 

_I'm not who I was then. I'm asking you to release me, and if I do, if I will die._

Silence. 

He continued walking. He wasn't even sure why, but at the same time, he didn't feel like stopping. He didn't need to stop. There was no reason to. There was nowhere to be, and he had come from nowhere. He didn't need to go, either, but at this point it felt automatic. He could feel it, burning through his arm, and following him. It was as though the creature was hovering at his side, there and nowhere. What was a god other than a being of pure energy, anyway? Of course it didn't have any physical form or even a shape to give itself to speak to him.

**I will do as you request, and release you, against what I know is my better judgement, and the judgement of the gods.**

The voice seemed to fade away after that, but he knew it wasn't gone. He could still feel the signer mark, burning on his arm. The mark of the dragon. He was still its property. He still belonged to it. He remembered Aki calling it a cursed mark, once. What a fitting name. At the time, he had refuted it. At the time, he had been filled with hope. At that time, he still believed in the future. Back then, he wasn't empty, the way he was now.

_Answer me._

**You are a child of the light. You brought the power to pierce the darkness through your own hope. Through your own volition. I did not choose you by some birthright. I chose you because you were worthy. If I release you, I cannot say if you will die, or if you shall survive**.

_Why not?_

**Because that is for you to decide.**


End file.
